Last week, the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in which I am an ordained minister, decided to open the ministry of the ELCA to gay and lesbian pastors and other professional church workers living in committed same-gender relationships.
I’ve been surprised to find myself connecting this juncture in Lutheran denominational life with a strange, uncomfortable, and heart-breaking period in my own life–a period of discerning separation and divorce in my marriage. To me, it feels as if the ELCA right now is like a “marriage on the rocks.” Even more surprisingly, this gives me tremendous hope for the future.
When a marriage is struggling to stay together, it’s a time of discernment for both parties. There’s a time–and it’s sometimes a very long time–when you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I’ve seen couples go through this period of struggle and stay together, often strengthening the relationship in the process. In my own experience, though, the result was divorce.
What gives me hope for the ELCA is the possibility for growth through that struggle. In my own case, it was an opportunity to figure out what “faithfulness” meant to me in my life and in the marriage. In the Churchwide Assembly and the years of discernment on sexuality leading up to it, I have been heartened by the quality of much of the conversation (not all, certainly, but much of it). It gave me hope that people were not as concerned about being “right” as they were about being faithful to God’s call, even as they interpreted that call in different ways.
A marriage between two people, of course, is not entirely parallel to a denomination with almost five million people. But both share similar dynamics of “commitment to the family” and consequences of splitting that are both emotional (who are we with/without each other?) and practical (if we split, who gets the house?). In both, when things come to a head, they have usually been building for a long time. That’s certainly true in the ELCA, from which individuals and congregations have been leaving almost as soon as it formed in 1987–not just because of disagreement on sexuality, but also because of ecclesiological differences (regarding church authority and organization) and other issues. We have been living this struggle for a long time.
Sometimes I think, given our history and tradition, how could it be otherwise? Lutherans love to tell the story of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms saying that his conscience had been “taken captive by the Word of God,” and therefore, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” This is not a tradition which places unity above all other considerations or makes an idol of it. The commitment to conscience is strong in our Lutheran heritage (hmm…could that become an idol?).
It’s relatively easy to be united with others who “stand” in the same place with us. But when we stand in different places–as we clearly do on sexuality–it’s harder to know how conscience and unity can coexist. That’s what we’re struggling with, and it is a worthy struggle indeed. No matter how it turns out, I have hope that this new phase in our discernment will teach us all something about how we are called to be faithful in and to our communities, our witness, and our lives.
When I was discerning the end of my marriage, it felt like everything was falling apart. (I have heard some of that fear and grief of “falling apart” in the church these days: for example, ”People will leave the church in droves now!”) For me, it was when the foundations shook that I discovered what I truly stand on: not my own faithfulness, but God’s. In the years since my divorce, God’s faithfulness has brought life more abundant than I had ever imagined, especially during the awful heart-breaking struggle. If the ELCA’s foundations are shaking, it is a good chance to remember where we truly stand, as Bishop Hanson expressed in his letter to rostered leaders after the assembly: “We meet one another finally — not in our agreements or our disagreements — but at the foot of the cross, where God is faithful….” At the foot of the cross–isn’t that where abundant life always begins?
I celebrate the way that the ELCA can finally keep faith with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters in a new way, and I also grieve the way that others now feel as if they no longer belong to this church. In this time of struggle and discernment, I hope we can find a way to be faithful to our varying calls and remain united in the ELCA. But this is where discernment gets personal–for each person, pastor, and congregation. If our calls to faithfulness require some people to part ways, it will be with grief but also with hope that we will discover anew God’s faithfulness to us all.
